climate ethics & policy

David Morrow's current scholarly work focuses on climate ethics and climate policy, with a special interest in the ethics and governance of climate engineering. This page includes links to selected publications.

FAIRNESS IN ALLOCATING THE GLOBAL EMISSIONS BUDGET

One central question of climate justice is how to fairly allocate the global emissions budget. Some commentators hold that the concept of fairness is hopelessly equivocal on this point. Others claim that we need a complete theory of distributive justice to answer the question. This paper argues to the contrary that, given only weak assumptions about fairness, we can show that fairness requires an allocation that is at least as prioritarian as the equal per capita view. Since even the equal per capita view is more prioritarian than is politically feasible, fairness is univocal enough for all practical purposes.

INTERNATIONAL GOVERNANCE OF CLIMATE ENGINEERING: A SURVEY OF REPORTS ON CLIMATE ENGINEERING, 2009–2015

Discussions of climate engineering (CE) governance stand now at a crucial juncture. While the CE research community’s ideas about governance have become increasingly sophisticated and specific over the last half decade, they have by and large not been translated into actual governance mechanisms. This working paper summarizes the main points of agreement among major reports on CE governance and lays out some major open questions. This paper also surveys those reports with a view to helping readers understand each report’s distinctive features and major recommendations regarding CE governance.

One major question in climate justice is whether developed countries’ historical emissions are relevant to distributing the burdens of mitigating climate change. To argue that developed countries should bear a greater share of the burdens of mitigation because of their past emissions is to advocate ‘historical accountability.’ Standard arguments for historical accountability rely on corrective justice. These arguments face important objections. By using the notion of a global emissions budget, however, we can reframe the debate over historical accountability in terms of distributive justice. This paper argues that, given two defensible assumptions, distributive justice requires historical accountability. These assumptions are that the proper claimants on the emissions budgets are societies or states, not individuals, and that we should be allocating the entirety of the original, pre-industrial budget, rather than just the remainder.

GEOENGINEERING and NON-IDEAL THEORY

The strongest arguments for the permissibility of geoengineering (also known as climate engineering) rely implicitly on non-ideal theory—roughly, the theory of justice as applied to situations of partial compliance with principles of ideal justice. In an ideally just world, such arguments acknowledge, humanity should not deploy geoengineering; but in our imperfect world, society may need to complement mitigation and adaptation with geoengineering to reduce injustices associated with anthropogenic climate change. We interpret research proponents’ arguments as an application of a particular branch of non-ideal theory known as “clinical theory.” Clinical theory aims to identify politically feasible institutions or policies that would address existing (or impending) injustice without violating certain kinds of moral permissibility constraints. We argue for three implications of clinical theory: First, conditional on falling costs and feasibility, clinical theory provides strong support for some geoengineering techniques that aim to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Second, if some kinds of carbon dioxide removal technologies are supported by clinical theory, then clinical theory further supports using those technologies to enable “overshoot” scenarios in which developing countries exceed the cumulative emissions caps that would apply in ideal circumstances. Third, because of tensions between political feasibility and moral permissibility, clinical theory provides only weak support for geoengineering techniques that aim to manage incoming solar radiation.

STARTING A FLOOD TO STOP A FIRE? SOME MORAL CONSTRAINTS ON SOLAR RADIATION MANAGEMENT

Solar radiation management (SRM), a form of climate engineering, would offset the effects of increased greenhouse gas concentrations by reducing the amount of sunlight absorbed by the Earth. To encourage support for SRM research, advocates argue that SRM may someday be needed to reduce the risks from climate change. This paper examines the implications of two moral constraints—the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, and the Doctrine of Double Effect—on this argument for SRM and SRM research. The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, and perhaps the Doctrine of Double Effect, shows that the argument is weaker than it appears.